People Affected by Equifax’s Huge Data Breach Rises to 147 Million

The massive data breach announced by credit score giant Equifax Inc (NYSE:EFX) last year keeps getting worse. The Atlanta-based firm initially thought that the details of around 143 million customers had been hacked.

But Equifax has just increased that figure to over 147 million. That’s almost half of the US population. The affected people’s compromised details involves some driving license data but didn’t include social security numbers, which was the focus of earlier probes into the breach and the reason why this group was not identified sooner.

“This is not about newly discovered stolen data,” said Paulino do Rego Barros, Equifax’s interim CEO, “It’s about sifting through the previously identified stolen data, analyzing other information in our databases that was not taken by the attackers, and making connections that enabled us to identify additional individuals.”

Equifax shares have been hit hard since the breaches and their reputation has taken a massive blow.